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As the customer journey continues to evolve, even the most creative email content strategy isn’t going to guarantee new customers or conversions. Email marketers have to constantly question their assumptions to fully understand how to deliver value based on where customers are and what they’re doing in the moment.

Rethinking the consumer journey and the role data plays in driving message effectiveness can be critical to campaign success. So, here are four strategies to keep in mind when taking a more data-driven approach to email marketing.

Fine-Tune Audience Personas

With nearly 5.3 billion (paywall) active email accounts worldwide, understanding consumer habits and preferences can be a critical advantage for any savvy marketer. Now, email marketers are able to look beyond the click to access behavioral data that can help clarify the persona of the target customer. Enter audience segmentation, which, when done correctly in conjunction with messaging and personalization, can help brands achieve more favorable open and click-through rates.

As with any marketing concept, not all data is created equal. But that shouldn’t deter brands from diving into segmentation. To start, data for segmentation can come from web and social media traffic, in-store environments or surveys and quizzes. Leveraging data from multichannel campaigns can help marketers create rich segmentation data within customer profiles. From first-party, second-party and third-party sources, savvy marketers are connecting multiple data streams with their campaigns to create the most accurate audience profiles and segmentation.

Micro-Moments Still Matter

Even the most data-driven email has but a few seconds to capture the attention of a recipient. Those "intent-driven moments of decision-making and preference-shaping that occur throughout the entire consumer journey," as defined in a Think With Google article, are the micro-moments that matter. With micro-moment email marketing, it’s important to objectively realize that your brand or product isn’t the center of a consumer’s world.

Whether touching the 82% of smartphone users who consult their phones while in a store deciding which product to buy or the nearly seven out of 10 leisure travelers who use smartphones to search for travel ideas during spare moments, micro-moment marketers are winning the preference and intent game.

With micro-moment marketing, you must focus on creating and delivering an offer that has the highest chance of conversion in a defined moment. The successful brands of tomorrow have strategies for understanding and meeting consumers' needs in these micro-moments.

Personalization Is More Than A Name

The worst-kept secret in modern email marketing is more critical today than ever -- personalized emails deliver higher transaction rates. If you’re in the ever-evolving e-commerce market, personalization can make or break your chances for success. In a crowded social media and search-driven online marketplace, marketers need to stay a step ahead by targeting experiences with specific needs or characteristics via segmentation and personalization. That means creating more relevant, personalized messages that subscribers want to read and act upon.

As email marketing becomes more intelligent, some marketers are finding personalization value in automated tools using personalization variables of information unique to a subscriber’s persona. Segmenting audience by location, gender, age and buying history plus lifestyle, habits and other preferences gives brands the opportunity to send emails tailored to behavioral interests.

Personalization strategies that tap into audience segmentation and that are layered with micro-moment approaches are more likely to result in a bottom-line boost. Brands that can personalize at scale via automation for every touch-point in the customer journey will continue to succeed in the new year.

Nurture Through The Noise

According to Forrester (paywall), companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. In an increasingly complex and consumer experience-driven market, leveraging better data to understand the consumer’s journey and tracking movement from milestone to milestone will be key to successful nurturing.

Reengagement can be challenging, as email marketers must maintain a delicate balance between nurturing and noise. But through cross-channel reengagement, marketers can use email combined with search, SMS, social and display to reach consumers with targeted nurturing messages that resonate and drive action.